Portrait
A
portrait is a
painting,
photograph, or other artistic representation of a person. Portraits are often simple
head shots or
mug shots and are not usually overly elaborate. The intent is to show the basic appearance of the person, and occasionally some artistic insight into his or her personality.
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Roman-Egyptian funeral portrait of a young boy |
Some of the earliest portraits of people who were not kings or emperors, are the funeral portraits that survived in the dry climate of Egypt's
Fayum district. These are the only paintings of the Roman period that have survived, aside from
frescos.
The art of the portrait flourished in Roman sculptures, where sitters demanded realistic portraits, even unflattering ones. During the
4th century, the portrait began to retreat in favor of an idealized symbol of what that person looked like. (Compare the portraits of Roman Emperors
Constantine I and
Theodosius I at their entries.) In Europe true portraits of the outward appearance of individuals re-emerged in the late Middle Ages, in Burgundy and France.
One of best-known portraits in the Western world is
Leonardo da Vinci's painting titled
Mona Lisa, which is a painting of an unidentified woman. The worlds oldest known portrait was found in 2006 by a local
pensioner, Gérard Jourdy, in the Vilhonneur grotto near Angoulême and is thought to be 27,000-year-old[
1].
When the artist creates a portrait of him- or herself, it is called a
self-portrait. The first known in paint was by the
French artist
Jean Fouquet in c.
1450,[
2] but if the definition is extended the first was by the
Egyptian
Pharaoh Akhenaten's sculptor Bak, who carved a representation of himself and his wife Taheri c.
1365 BC. However, it seems likely that self-portraits go back to the
earliest representational art.
Portrait photography is a popular commercial industry all over the world. Many people enjoy having professionally made
family portraits to hang in their homes, or special portraits to commemorate certain events, such as graduations or weddings.
Since the dawn of photography, people have made portraits. The popularity of the
daguerreotype in the middle of the
19th century was due in large part to the demand for inexpensive portraiture. Studios sprang up in cities around the world, some cranking out more than 500 plates a day. The style of these early works reflected the technical challenges associated with 30-second exposure times and the
painterly aesthetic of the time. Subjects were generally seated against plain backgrounds and lit with the soft light of an overhead window and whatever else could be reflected with mirrors.
As photographic techniques developed, an intrepid group of photographers took their talents out of the studio and onto battlefields, across oceans and into remote wilderness.
William Shew's
Daguerreotype Saloon,
Roger Fenton's
Photographic Van and
Mathew Brady's
What-is-it? wagon set the standards for making portraits and other photographs in the field.
In politics, portraits of the leader are often used as a symbol of the state. In most countries it is common protocol for a portrait of the
head of state to appear in important government buildings. Excessive use of a leader's portrait can be indicative of a
personality cult.
In
literature the term
portrait refers to a written description or analysis of a person or thing. A written portrait often gives deep insight, and offers an analysis that goes far beyond the superficial. For example, American author
Patricia Cornwell wrote a best-selling book titled
Portrait of a Killer about the personality, background, and possible motivations of
Jack the Ripper, as well as the media coverage of his murders, and the subsequent police investigation of his crimes.
Most people consider photographs as more practical than portraits, yet certain philosophers and writers expressed a sense of nostalgia towards painted portraits. In his novel 'The journey of the fool',
Fady Bahig puts on the touge of his protagonist those words:
... portraits, with their blurred edges fall much closer to the heart of the beholder than photographs with their well-defined edges. Portraits have always given me the feeling of perceiving people as eternal or as manifestations of eternity, as if I have been familiar with them for the whole eternity that preceded my essence.*
Portrait painting*
Hierarchy of genres*
The Portrait Now*
The Portrait of a Lady, a novel published in
1881 and a film in
1996*
Painting the Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900-2000*
National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution*
National Portrait Gallery London*
Painting The Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces*
Jeanne Ivy's Self-Portrait Page -
What Artists Find When They Search in the Mirror.
*
Oil Portrait Paintings By Famous Israeli Painter*
Website of Portrait Artist Darla Dixon*
www.OrderPortrait.com: Customized Portrait from Digital Photo -
4 easy steps to turn your Digital Photo to true hand oil portrait. Watch your painting Progress Upadates every 72 hours.
*
Portrait Detectives - Fun interactive introduction to the analysis of portraiture.
*
Reportret - A gallery of reconstructions of missing portraits from world history.
